Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2)

by Harper Dallas

  Then his smile straightens again, and my stomach flip-flops. I feel a little breathless. We used to do stuff like this all the time. This is what our life was. I’d almost forgotten, with everything that happened—how it felt to just do these things. To decide that we would, and then to do it.

  Our life together was an adventure, and we made the most of every moment of it.

  I find myself smiling, too.

  “Yeah. I’m coming.”

  I fill up a thermos of hot chocolate before I go to gather the things. Once I’ve pulled on some pants and wrapped myself in my down jacket it’s all I can do to carry the sleeping bags out under each arm.

  I never even thought that I’d left mine here. Since my life and JJ’s parted ways, I haven’t done any camping. We used to go together all the time. Those long summers, when after months apart in the winter we spent almost every moment together, driving to national parks and sleeping under the stars.

  The past feels so close I could touch it.

  When I get outside, JJ’s already warmed up the truck. For a moment it’s easy to forget that it’s been so long since I saw him in the driver’s seat. He used to always be there, when we were out here, the same as I always drove when we were in a city.

  My hand twitches over the exact sense memory of how far the reach is for his own.

  Our eyes meet, and for one moment we just look at each other, steadily, before JJ begins to twist the wheel and lowers his foot on the gas.

  “Right. Let’s see some meteors.”

  Out in the National Elk Reserve everything is the black, black sky and the speckled stars above us, bright in the arc of heaven.

  “New moon,” JJ remarks as he opens the driver side door. “Best time to see some falling stars.”

  I half expect him to make some comment about Los Angeles and its distinct lack of stars, but he doesn’t. He only holds onto the wheel as he eases himself out, and the sound of pain I’m waiting for doesn’t come.

  Another twist he can do. The knowledge sings inside of me somewhere, a bright light that burns in my chest.

  When I close the door behind me, the cold takes my breath away. Dead of night, and with no clouds between us and the sky it’s as if I can feel all those aching empty light-years of space, chill and far away and so near, all at once. I stand there for a moment, drifting away to something else, something bigger than myself. The kind of thing that JJ used to show me.

  I’m brought back to myself by the ruffling sounds of JJ getting the sleeping bags out of their cases and throwing them into the bed of the truck. When I walk back and look in, I see he’s also brought cushions from the couch, setting them up so we can lean with our backs to the cab and look east.

  I can feel him standing beside me at the end of the tailgate, looking at it, and for one moment it doesn’t seem natural that we’re here. I can feel him so clearly that it prickles over my skin.

  I move, as if in moving I might escape these thoughts. The truck has always been too tall for me. As I brace my knee to the bed and begin to push myself up, a soft pressure spreads at my back. JJ’s hand. I would know it blindfolded.

  “Easy,” he murmurs, and somehow I feel that if I fell even broken he could catch me, even if it meant breaking himself all over again.

  I busy myself with my sleeping bag as he gets up behind me. Trying to keep my face down so he doesn’t see the warmth on my cheeks. Trying to watch without being seen to watch.

  JJ used to leap up into this truck bed, a fluid push through his planted palms, an athletic hop. Now the movement’s careful, and in the starlight I can see the edge of his frown. Over the quiet, soft night sounds, the catch of his breath hitches at me, and I reach for him without thinking.

  We both look at my hand on his arm. We both look at each other.

  Breaths in the darkness, one endless tide, on and on, coming in.

  In to each other.

  I break away, rubbing my hand over my pants as if that might remove the guilt of trying to help the man I’m not sure I’m allowed to touch anymore. “We look this way?”

  There’s a long, long beat, and it’s all I can do not to look at him. I force myself to keep my face down as I rest on my butt, toeing off my boots before pushing my legs into the bag and then shimmying it up over my hips.

  I only allow myself to look at him once I’m in, and all of me up to my armpits is in the bag.

  “Yeah,” he says finally. “Chase says it’s in the one that’s the dude carrying water.”

  I smile as the hammering of my heart slows. “Aquarius.”

  “That’s the one.”

  He doesn’t shuffle into his own bag, and I try not to think why, about the twisting tugging pain at his scar. Where metal lives under his skin. Or at least—more metal than I’ve ever been used to. Instead he unzips the bag and tucks it around himself before leaning back against the cushions.

  Like kids on a first date, we leave an awkward amount of space between us. A silence, too. One that doesn’t feel like the easy ones you share when you’re together for years.

  One that feels heavy. I can’t tell if it’s the weight of the past, or the heaviness of something pregnant. Something new.

  “I don’t see any meteors,” I say, and to my relief it seems to break something. JJ snorts, and when I look at him he’s grinning.

  “I said I’d do anything for you, Kel, but even I can’t literally bring you the stars on cue.”

  I laugh, and the moment snaps, and we’re just smiling at each other. Strands of his hair break out from under his beanie. This feels like the most JJ he is, somehow. Like old times. I’ve seen him in this down jacket a thousand times. When I imagine him, it’s often with his warm hat on. It’s almost always with him outside.

  He just looks right here, out in the wilderness, chasing shooting stars.

  I miss a breath, and inside of me something blossoms from ashes. Insistent. Persistent. On and on.

  JJ watches my tongue move over my lips before he reaches one arm carefully for the thermos.

  “They say there should be at least fifteen an hour out here. Best place to see them is the southern hemisphere, but I thought you probably wouldn’t entertain my crazy ideas long enough to get to Brazil.”

  I snort. “No. Probably not. Fifteen an hour sounds plenty.”

  “Minimum.” JJ nods as he agrees. We both watch as he fills the screw-top cup with hot chocolate before our eyes meet. “You first.”

  I smile as I take it, and it feels hesitant. Not in the sense of being unsure. In the sense of being… delicate. The metal feels cool still against my fingers, and as I lean back against the cushion I cup my hands below my face and breathe in the warm smoke, with its smell of sweetness and wholesomeness. Somehow it smells of home—or all the things I associate with home. Domesticity. Peace. Family.

  “You have to look halfway up the sky.” Fabric rustles as JJ settles beside me. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, but more than that I can feel him, the way his body settles down. His movements are so familiar they feel almost like my own. Like the two of us are one animal, one unit, here in the open wide dark.

  If the asteroids come or not, it’s beautiful. I feel suddenly very small as I look up at the wide arc of the sky.

  My chest aches, something unfurling inside of me, and a shiver passes down my back. When I sip at the hot chocolate, the burn of it against my lip isn’t enough to steady me.

  I hear it before I see it, the star. Hear the sucked inhale of JJ’s breath, a tremoring awe.

  “Look,” he whispers and I don’t have to follow his pointing finger. I’ve seen it, the bright cut through the air, the otherworldly sight of a star crashing down like an angel falling. Like someone who flew too close to the sun.

  What can we say, before that? We can only sit here together in the darkness, and now it does not feel alone. Now the air feels full about us, as we look up at all the stars. The ones that are fixed, pinned into the sky as if the night is a blac
k blanket hooked up for a child’s fort, and the ones that are moving, streaking into luminescent existence for one breath, cutting across the heavens, before they fade away.

  The constellations are the past. Someone told me that, once. That when we look at the night sky we’re looking at ancient history, at stars long dead. Their light is still traveling, though. Still affecting us even today.

  The past, hanging up there, still casting out its light. Over, and yet not gone.

  Insistently, constantly here.

  It should be cold and old and heavy. And instead the spring night is scratched with light, falling as sure as embers rise. Against the history of the stars come these sparks, these new-bright things born out of ancient blackness. They are today, they are now, they burn so brightly that they seem alive. Just like us. Just like this.

  This breathless, weightless feeling—it’s been so long since I felt it. Been so long since I went and did something just for the joy, for the beauty of it.

  JJ doesn’t have to say a thing. I know that he’s feeling it, too. The experience is shared, something I simply know in the way that you know if you walk into a house and you can tell that it’s empty.

  Together we watch, and we share, and we drift together as if the moon pulls us in its wake, sure as the tides. This space under JJ’s arm was meant for me. It’s a truth deeper than needing his body heat against the cold night. Deeper than just that human need to be close when outside all is dark and empty.

  JJ’s arm slides over my shoulders, and he isn’t breathing anymore than I am, as we settle together in the way that we always used to lie.

  “Beautiful,” JJ whispers, and it could be about the stars, maybe.

  I can’t speak. Can’t trust myself, because what would I say? So I finish the hot chocolate so steaming that it burns my tongue, and I try to ease a breath through myself after I’ve swallowed, and my shoulders move against his body.

  His hand squeezes light at my shoulder, and he shifts so that his cheek rests ever so gently against my head.

  Home. I’ve missed it so badly, and only now I’m back again can I realize how much. The pain that threaded through all of those months. Every breath that I was away from this, from here.

  From him.

  If we don’t name it, maybe it can last, this delicate, precious thing. Maybe I can take the pleasure of it, the sheer animal rightness of being beside him. Maybe I don’t have to think about the rest, as together we watch the ancient history that still casts its light, and the bright nowness breaking through.

  Because they’re not really dead, the stars. They’re still there. They’ve always been there.

  In the dark, secrets feel safe. Everything is not like it is in the waking day. Potential creeps in the shadows, safe in the soft glowing starlight.

  I slide in closer to him, and I feel the hitch of his breath in his chest. My better judgment is a thing left behind in light. Here, under the stars, I can’t resist what I want, not when it’s so close. I press my cheek to his chest and listen to the still here, still here of his heart, and feel my own breath shake as his does, too.

  “Raquel,” he whispers, and his voice is thick and choked, and at my arm his hand slides down, as if through all this down he could stroke very line of me like it’s precious. Like I’m precious.

  I can feel the shake of his fingers through the layers of my jacket and sweater. His heart is beating faster now, like mine must be, these two caged animals yearning to break free in the darkness, beating frantic as wings against the cages of our chests. Of our decisions.

  “Raquel,” he repeats, and it’s a request, a question, and what am I going to say to it? When I twist, and turn to look at him, and he is so close.

  His deep, dark eyes.

  His open mouth.

  The heat of his breath on my skin, so close.

  We don’t have to move. It feels like we only drift on something bigger than us. The turning world pushes us together like two woven threads, and the moment that our lips brush I’m sparking, electric, a shivering rush that makes my breath take voice against his lips. A murmur. A moan.

  JJ’s answering hum is deeper, baritone from the breadth of his chest. I can taste his breath. His kiss is hesitant, wondering, one moment of rapture.

  We kiss slowly, as if it’s the first time. Tentative. Learning. Our mouths closed, and tender.

  Inside of me, my soul signs, teased to one high pure note like a wet fingertip over crystal. Made to sing in the way only JJ can.

  Like after a long, long hibernation, something inside of me is alive again.

  Then his hand finds my cheek, gathering surety, and his fingers slide under my beanie and into my hair, and beneath my resting twisted weight his whole body shudders as he slides his tongue over my lips, dipping to find my own, sending an unfurling slither of want through me.

  Just like that, I’m drowning.

  The whole world could fall over, the sky could come crashing down, and it wouldn’t matter. I’m reduced to this cramped, hot-breath world, just the two of us in this big empty space, and all that matters is the nothing-distance between us. The way that JJ’s hands hold me, one arm wrapped about my shoulders with its hand at my bicep, the other palm pressed to my cheek so that I can only hear the heat of his skin.

  He kisses me like a man dying of thirst would drink, and my body against his goes soft and pliable, and I shudder with a want that crawls through me, and he makes a sound that pools wet between my thighs.

  I wasn’t going to kiss him. I wasn’t going to do any of this. But now I relax against him and open my mouth to his claiming and press tighter, my breasts against his chest, my legs shifting so that one bag-draped limb hooks over his.

  Like a heat, like a want, like gravity, he draws me in, and our kiss gains heat and hunger, and all there is is want, now. We’ve been apart so long—been separated so long—and now here he is, close, and when he rolls me onto my back I go easily, whimpering only to have his mouth taken away, my legs spreading vainly inside the bag because I want him, here—

  The pain grunts out of him, a spasming twitch as he goes to roll over me, an action that would once have been so easy.

  The grunt of his pain rips through the peace, and suddenly the magical timeless moment is gone.

  What am I doing?

  I can’t do this.

  I can’t get close and then lose him again.

  His spine burst. It shattered and broke and they cut—and they shoved—

  JJ sees the look on my face. He’s collapsed back, and I can see how pale he is.

  His hand reaches for me. He grits his teeth as he tries to move again, to angle himself over me.

  “Raquel…”

  I shake my head, stopping his movement in its tracks.

  “I’m sorry.” I shake my head again. “I can’t—JJ.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  He means his back. But I feel cold where I now was hot, sickness replacing lust in my belly, and that fluttering thing isn’t want and hope anymore. It’s fear, and sadness, and this thing that aches in my throat and makes my eyes wet. My breath still stutters, but now it’s as I hold back tears.

  I can’t show him. I won’t show him. I take a deep breath, and I focus on that, and I harden my outside self for another shake of my head.

  “No, JJ. That was a mistake.”

  He recoils as if he’s been hit, and more pain passes over his face than was caused by his back.

  “We need to go home,” I say. “I want to go home.”

  Above us, another star falls, burns, dies.

  JJ

  On the way home in the truck, Raquel never once looks my way. She keeps staring out of the window, her face a mystery to me.

  What is she thinking? What was that for her? What…?

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  When I kill the engine in the garage, there’s a long moment of silence that stretches. It’s like that thing about the cat in the box. If neither of us say anythin
g, then this isn’t settled yet. What happened. How it ended. Whether…

  I know it was stupid to hope, but it still feels like a kick in the gut as Raquel turns that closed-off smile to me.

  “Thanks for driving us. I’m exhausted.”

  And then she’s slipping out of the truck too fast to be casual, heading into the house. The door closes too loudly after her.

  Fuck.

  My slow exhale is loud in the stillness. I have to grip the steering wheel for a long, hard second before I can make myself move, and then it takes me a long time to get myself out of the truck. Without Raquel here, I don’t have to hide how much it hurts to get out of the bucket seat. But it’s not only that which has me standing in the half light of the garage, hurting like hell.

  The door to the house looks far more innocent than it has any right to, given what’s in there.

  She tasted like heaven.

  To hold her…

  I can still feel the ghost of her in my arms. Her slender weight. I can still smell her perfume. The way her legs spread…

  Every step between me and her hurts. I can feel them all. Just the same way I did when she was away on the other side of the world.

  Except now she’s right here. And what am I gonna do? Leave it? Let her go away again?

  Or will chasing her only make her run?

  I don’t really decide to do it. I just throw the keys on the couch. Grab a tumbler of whiskey.

  End up outside her room, just looking, waiting.

  I have this crazy sense that she’s on the other side too. Waiting just like me.

  Both of us, separated by a thin piece of wood, still tied together somehow. The way we always have been.

  The whiskey burns in my mouth as I rest my forehead silently against the wood of her door. I can’t make myself say her name.

  So I mouth it instead.

  I love you.

  I listen, like she might have heard the words I couldn’t say.

  Like she might say them back.

  Like I’m an idiot.